Mandatory BIS Safety Tests for Lighter Manufacturing in India

As the Indian lighter manufacturing industry is growing rapidly, it sounds like a profitable business for many of us. Before your next move, here’s something you need to understand the specific safety requirements of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). We'll break down what you need to do, and how strong your lighter needs to be.

Every lighter manufacture should have mandatory BIS certification based on India standards IS/ ISO 9994:2018.

Here’s few BIS recommended safety tests required while testing, which is categorized into:

Functionality testing

1. Flame generation – To eliminate risk of easy ignition or self-ignition of flame, the lighters must be designed to necessitate deliberate manual operation. It could be one or more independent action or actuating force of 15N to generate flame.
   
2. Flame extinction – The main goal to extinguish lighter’s flame completely through normal operation and to ensure it doesn’t reignite after extinguishing action.
   
3. Flame height and adjustment – This ensures the height of the flame is within safe limits. For lighters with adjustable flame heights, flame adjustment test is performed to check if flame height remains within specified limit across range.
   
4. Resistance for Spitting, Sputtering and Flaring - This aims to check lighter during normal operations, does not expel burning fuel (spitting or sputtering), or exhibit uncontrolled flame height (flaring).
   
5. Volumetric Displacement – This test determines the amount of fuel within the lighter container and minimize the risk of excessive filling.

Structural integrity testing

1. Resistance to fuel loos, dropping and elevated temperatures – This test ensures that the lighter does not leak fuel, and it can withstand sudden drop or when exposed to temperatures higher than normal temperature.
   
2. Compatibility with fuel – This test ensures that the material’s used in lighter construction especially the fuel reservoir and other components are chemically compatible with the fuel (butane and propane mix in general).
   
3. Resistance to cyclic burning - The goal is to check if the lighter can withstand repeated ignition and extinguishing cycle without failure or developing unsafe conditions.
   
4. Resistance to continuous burning – This test evaluates lighter’s ability when subjected to prolonged and uninterrupted burning. During this look for flame stability, flame height and burning behavior.

If you wish to know more about the tests, test equipment, levels of control and scheme of inspection, refer to the product manual for lighters by BIS.

BIS Manual for Testing - https://bis.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/PM-IS-9994.pdf

Conduct all the mandatory tests recommended by BIS to avoid penalties under BIS Act, 2016.

While we are talking about safe practices; it is also important to have a fuel partner like SUPERGAS who not only ensures customized butane: propane mix but also ensure safe fuel handling and storage in the facility.

For more information or any queries related to safe practices, we are here to help.

Contact us today – 9121177930